Measuring driving performance by car-following in traffic

Abstract

The measurement of impairing effects on driving performance by such external factors as alcohol, medicinal drugs, or mobile telephoning, etc., is extended with a new test. Most existing methods of measuring impairing effects in the actual driving environment have the drawback that, irrespective of high sensitivity, they measure driving skills that are involved in only a very low percentage of accident causes, i.e., accidents after motor-response or eye-hand co-ordination errors. Since in accident causation, attention and perception errors predominate over response errors, on-road studies should examine specifically deterioration in attention and perception. The ability to follow a car in front, as measured by coherence and reaction time to speed variations, offers such a measure of attention and perception performance.